Seeking Refuge

Well, here we are again, but unlike last weekend when I was advised not to walk the Pilgrim’s Crossing, because of exceptional high tides and then the weather, it is good to be at last on this walk. I was taken by my “spiritual supervisor” to the far end of the tarmac road leading off Holy Island to walk back to the St Cuthbert’s Centre, which is the beginning and the end of the Walk of St Cuthbert’s. When I started out I half expected, probable in a selfish way, to do the walk alone. To be exposed to the elements and this very different environment, but God in with his renowned sense of humour thought otherwise.

I set out not knowing the route, other than just follow the wooden poles, there was one pole that would given the leaning Tower of Pisa a run for it’s money. There are two refuge boxes built well above the high water mark, but even so you might not want to spend six hours in here bearing in mind there is no roof. So, it is rains, you will get damp and cold. When I looked at the refuge places on the walk you cannot help but notice that the one for car drivers has a door, a window and a roof! On the sands you climb up a wooden ladder. The car drivers can walk up a stairs with a hand rail. On the mudflats the boxes are not painted and car drivers one is. I wonder why for a few minutes and came to the conclusion that car drivers like their creature comforts and the pilgrims liked the rough and rugged adventure of openness.

From the prehistory of the Orkneys, dating back three thousand years before Jesus’s birth to the worldly bustle of the IOW, and then look here on Holy Island, people are seeking God’s Word, through the Lindisfarne Gospels and from the very fabric of this special place. Unlike the Orkneys and the Isle of Wight, Holy Island is a tidal place. Businesses work with the tides opening only for a short period some days and longer when the tide means the causeway is open to traffic and walkers alike during, what might best be called, “normal working hours”. However, being a tidal island and thereby tidal living, then this place seems to have a much more tranquil air about it. Walk around here when it is high tide and Holy Island becomes more completive, more reflective in it’s isolation.

If on this walk, this pilgrimage, I am seeking refuge, then it is more about seeking refuge in God’s Spirit. Not because I want to know what he wants of me, but how I can use my degree in Contextual Theology more usefully and in the spirit it was meant. I revel in the idea that if the Bible is to be contextual, truly in the word and the meaning of it. Then while the Bible, is made up of books written for a particular people at particular times.  As a contextual theologian I believe that God to be present and active in each local context – in the faces of my neighbours and strangers I meet on the ‘Way”, and in the life we seek to build together.

That is why, for me, theology has to be contextual, living and working in the space provided. Theology, for me is not just a matter of academic analysis, which sometime leaves me cold. Rather, it emerges from a life of prayer and practice. In a community that meets with God in Word and Sacrament, that listens to the wisdom of tradition, with a small ‘t’, and how I seek to discern and respond to his presence and action in the world.

As a church minister of the United Reformed Church I try to do just that: to understand and enter more deeply into the communities where God has placed me, even on my sabbatical; my traveling as I drive both north and south of where I live; to discern and respond to his presence and action, and so to, to engage in faithful and be a more effective witness.

In all the places I have be so fortunate to visit, I have found something new in this engagement and effective witnessing. All three places are very different, especially when I think of the three questions I have been asking of each island community. In some respects the question are not just for each place, but for me to answer about myself. Seeking refuge and finding God on all of the islands and the people I have met has been a real privilege, including one lady who comes here to Holy Island, who sleeps rough, but has been sharing more and more each day of herself and her faith.